Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
Speaker 1: wins last for me to hangover? Um definitely not this morning. Um.
Speaker 1: In the last six months plus six months, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had one personal long time actually last weekend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, which is not my usual thing. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the last time I actually had one, because I'm
Speaker 1: generally not a big drinker, but you know, occasionally go
Speaker 1: to a party and somebody will have will provide the alcohol.
Speaker 1: And it's when they don't either either they're they're new
Speaker 1: to the idea of mixing up a large quantity of
Speaker 1: a drink and then forcing them upon people, or that
Speaker 1: or they don't understand basic chemistry or something. That's when
Speaker 1: I encountered the disastrous effects. In this case, it was
Speaker 1: an overly strong margharita that had been mixed up for everybody,
Speaker 1: because like a Mexican Christmas party, it was a great party.
Speaker 1: But but the margarita's were basically tequila and ice and
Speaker 1: some sugar and and that was a bad situation. In
Speaker 1: other cases, I've encountered. Um uh, you know, you go
Speaker 1: to a party and someone will hand out jello shots
Speaker 1: and they won't even solidify that they're they're so poorly mixed,
Speaker 1: and that is generally disastrous. Okay, well I have to
Speaker 1: say that the festive Mexican Christmas party, I feel kind
Speaker 1: of relieved. I thought you were doing keg stands or something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we're definitely talking about this, uh today this podcast,
Speaker 1: because what's coming up New Year's right, Yeah, lots of revelry,
Speaker 1: lots of debauchery, and in fact, if your Norwegian, maybe
Speaker 1: you even say that it could lead to va Oh yes,
Speaker 1: this is one of the older terms for for the hangover. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it actually means uneasiness following debauchery. Do you
Speaker 1: think the the hangover movies are called vessels? You over there?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like if I was told, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go see this movie but selgy it sounds like
Speaker 1: a really serious Norwegian you know, black and white art film,
Speaker 1: and I would be like, ah, let's see that, and
Speaker 1: then I would I would be rather disappointed. But then
Speaker 1: you'd feel like there's a monkey in there. Oh, such
Speaker 1: data ism, such surrealism. Well the monkey, y know, well
Speaker 1: it would be used in a more surreal fashion. I imagine,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, but but yeah, and so in this
Speaker 1: podcast we are going to talk about the hangover, the
Speaker 1: the the actual hangover, what what's going on in it? Wait,
Speaker 1: you can do to prevent it to well, I mean
Speaker 1: the big thing you can do to prevent it, of course,
Speaker 1: is to do not drink, and and hopefully too, as
Speaker 1: we discussed the uh the wages of of drinking, you will, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're definitely not encouraging you to do. In fact,
Speaker 1: if anything that should I mean just reading over it
Speaker 1: and research again, I'm like, man, and maybe I shouldn't,
Speaker 1: you know, I should just skip everything? Well right right,
Speaker 1: by the end of this podcast, you'll have a really
Speaker 1: good idea of why it's super creepy. Actually, this hangover
Speaker 1: process that happens to your body is basically like a
Speaker 1: big talk six spill that your body has to clean up.
Speaker 1: And then you'll also understand why you keep doing it.
Speaker 1: So we'll cover that. But first of all, let's talk
Speaker 1: about what this feels like. What's a hangover to you? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a whole list of of things that
Speaker 1: it feels like a whole list of symptoms, and it
Speaker 1: depends a lot of It depends on exactly how this
Speaker 1: chemical spill plays out inside your body. There are several
Speaker 1: different factors that contribute to it, but the symptoms generally
Speaker 1: fall out like this headache obviously, and granted that can
Speaker 1: range from a slight headache and oh, I had a
Speaker 1: little bit much too much to drink last night headache
Speaker 1: to a my skull is about to fall in half headache. Yes,
Speaker 1: poor sense of overall well being, you know the words.
Speaker 1: You just wake up and you just feel crappy, sensitivity
Speaker 1: to light and sound, so you wake up. Was I
Speaker 1: bid by a vampire? Or did I just drink a lot?
Speaker 1: You don't know. Diarrhea, loss of appetite, trembling, uh, not good,
Speaker 1: nausea of course, fatigue, increased heart rate and blood pressure, dehydration,
Speaker 1: dry mouth, extreme thirst, dry eyes. And this is really
Speaker 1: key and will discuss later on this dehydration because this
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with how you're feeling overall. Uh.
Speaker 1: Trouble concentrating, which is an interesting one because I was
Speaker 1: I was looking around, um and I couldn't find anything
Speaker 1: to back me up. In this. So this is one
Speaker 1: of those cases where I might have to say, hey, readers, listeners, rather, uh,
Speaker 1: if you have anything to add on this, I'd be
Speaker 1: interested to hear. I found what what are you gonna
Speaker 1: lay down on us? I found that in the in
Speaker 1: the in the rare cases that I have been hungover,
Speaker 1: there seems to be like a certain amount of hangover
Speaker 1: that is conducive to concentration on work like that. There's
Speaker 1: a certain amount. And I'm not saying it's necessarily the
Speaker 1: hangover made made me smarter or more concentrate. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: part of like you're overcompensating for the fact that you
Speaker 1: you potentially screwed up your current, your present by what
Speaker 1: you did in the past. So I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that it would be interesting to hear from other people.
Speaker 1: Certainly could concentrate on TV watching, I'm sure a lot better.
Speaker 1: But if you're a parent like I am, and you
Speaker 1: if you do this foolish thing, you you have a
Speaker 1: hangover and you have a splitting headache. There's just yet
Speaker 1: concentrating is not going to happen. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: other ones are anxiety difficulties, sleeping, and weakness. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean muscle weakness, right, Yeah, so of course it's just
Speaker 1: all these different factors of malaise that happens. And what
Speaker 1: can actually exacerbate this. To just keep in mind is
Speaker 1: that if you drink on an empty stomach, you could
Speaker 1: have a horrific hangover the next day if you have
Speaker 1: a lack of sleep. Um, let's say you dance for
Speaker 1: four hours straight. And the physical exertion is also a
Speaker 1: part of that too. Yeah, physical exertion and you lost
Speaker 1: a lot of the water content in your body right again,
Speaker 1: dehydration before drinking, and then poor health, which kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, So if you've got the flu, it's
Speaker 1: probably not a good idea to go on a bender exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't compromise your body. Um. And I should also point
Speaker 1: out the whole like that you're weak, your muscles just
Speaker 1: don't have as much energy. I do remember one of
Speaker 1: the the times I was hungover in college. Um, I
Speaker 1: had to go into an acting class and they were
Speaker 1: doing a lot of body work that day, and it
Speaker 1: was there was a lot of like, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: some yoga stuff. And this was like a decade or
Speaker 1: so before I not a decade, but a long time
Speaker 1: before I actually got into yoga, So it was just
Speaker 1: pure torture, the idea, We're gonna do all these squats
Speaker 1: and and down dogs and uh and all this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting you bring up the acting classes, because they do.
Speaker 1: They love all sorts of random body warming up experiments.
Speaker 1: I called them experiments because I have one teacher who
Speaker 1: loved Marcel Marceau and so we mined for like twenty
Speaker 1: minutes to get warmed up. I'm not kidding. And another
Speaker 1: teacher who liked to play an album that's like a
Speaker 1: charm and mow, um, it's supposed to be inspirational, uh
Speaker 1: this record, and that we would march information the liberal
Speaker 1: infiltration of academia. So yeah, and I'm just gonna throw
Speaker 1: this out there. Maybe hangover yoga is a thing. Maybe somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that someone has created a hangover yoga for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's uh talk a little more about what happens,
Speaker 1: what happens in your body? And um, you touched on
Speaker 1: this earlier and you told us it was important that
Speaker 1: it is. It's this thing called the diuretic effect, right,
Speaker 1: alcohol sends your kidneys a message to send water directly
Speaker 1: to the bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's why when you have a beer, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty minutes later, you all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom. Yeah, this is why. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just becomes a NonStop trip back and forth to pee. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's why the longer than night goes on, the harder
Speaker 1: it is to go use the bathroom at a bar
Speaker 1: in a reasonable amount of time, right, because everybody's cued up.
Speaker 1: And it's why the floor in the men's room at
Speaker 1: any given bar is like an inch deep in urine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. Another great reason to go and celebrating
Speaker 1: your local pub or bar. And this is called vasopressin inhibition.
Speaker 1: And this is a really interesting alcohol causes four times
Speaker 1: as much liquid to be lost as gained. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are studies that showed the drinking about two d and
Speaker 1: fifty million liters of an alcoholic beverage caused the body
Speaker 1: to expel eight hundred to a thousand million liters of water. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there you go. Okay, so what's the big result
Speaker 1: of this is that you feel like a sun droid
Speaker 1: to me the next day, you are very dehydrated. That's
Speaker 1: the whole that's you know, your eyes feel dry, your
Speaker 1: mouth feels dry, so that kind of sound, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and of course your mouth feels like something died
Speaker 1: in it too. Yeah, there's there's some smells that we're
Speaker 1: not going to go into because we're gonna talk more
Speaker 1: about how your body actually feels. The creepiest part is
Speaker 1: that your organs are responsible for giving you a head
Speaker 1: splitting headache because they essentially steal water from your brain,
Speaker 1: causing it to decrease in size and pull on the
Speaker 1: membranes that connect the brain to the skull, causing the pain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're they're like, look, there's a water shortage. Uh,
Speaker 1: us lower organs really need all the goods brain you're
Speaker 1: just gonna have to make do you got us into
Speaker 1: this anyway? So uh yeah, you you're not gonna think
Speaker 1: today anyway because you're hungover. So we're just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and uh shrink your brain here. Also, because you've
Speaker 1: been a p machine again thanks to that directic effect
Speaker 1: of alcohol. If you've lost potassium, sodium, and glucose, which
Speaker 1: we know as a source of energy and all, this
Speaker 1: can result in fatigue nausea and motor skills pross of
Speaker 1: saik a toddler. Well, what was that last part that
Speaker 1: you could have the motor skills pross of a talking essentially,
Speaker 1: because you know you have your you know, woken up
Speaker 1: in the morning and a night of debauchery and said
Speaker 1: to yourself, Oh, that's awful. You managed to get your
Speaker 1: head up off the pillow and then you just start
Speaker 1: banging into door frames everywhere. Well that's me all the
Speaker 1: time anyway, and not the debauchery part, but just waking
Speaker 1: up and stumbling over things. Okay, well made worse by alcohol. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a klutz anyway, so if I was, if I'm hungover,
Speaker 1: then God help me. Another thing you have to worry
Speaker 1: about when you have alcohol. It's something called the congenera effect.
Speaker 1: And congenders are byproducts of fermentation in some alcohols. Uh,
Speaker 1: you'll encounter these and generally red wines and dark liquors
Speaker 1: such as your bourbons, your brandise, your whiskey, enough, your tequila.
Speaker 1: These are just additional toxins that can have various effects
Speaker 1: on the body. Right, And Okay, the the darker the
Speaker 1: alcohol like rum or red wine, the more congenerous are
Speaker 1: in it. So if you've got white wine or vodka,
Speaker 1: you're actually going to be imbibing less congenerous, which is
Speaker 1: a good thing. In fact, there was one study that
Speaker 1: said that thirty three of those who drink an amount
Speaker 1: of bourbon relative to their body weight reported a severe hangover,
Speaker 1: compared to three percent of those who drink the same
Speaker 1: amount of vodka. Not to say that clear liquors is
Speaker 1: a path to salvation, because because ever clear is pure
Speaker 1: looking at the driven snow, but everyone knows that it's
Speaker 1: brewed in the devil's vowels, so nicely put yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And then we know, of course that mixing is a
Speaker 1: bad idea, right right, Yeah. I like that they have
Speaker 1: all the things right, like beer before wine, go to bed,
Speaker 1: fine line before beer, nothing to fear. I'm right now.
Speaker 1: I can't remember one of them is bad, but I
Speaker 1: don't remember which. At any rate, they say, don't mix, right.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're having a margarite, to stick to marguarite.
Speaker 1: If you're having read wine, stick to red wine. Don't
Speaker 1: try and uh, you know, and earn all your merit
Speaker 1: badges in one night. That's right, because all those merit
Speaker 1: badges come with different points of toxicity, right, So you're
Speaker 1: basically just creating a little toxicity cocktail for your body
Speaker 1: to try to clean up the next day. Also, it
Speaker 1: should be noted carbonation, you know, such as you know
Speaker 1: in beer's, ciders, et cetera. These actually speed up the
Speaker 1: absorption of alcohol that's my body. So think about that.
Speaker 1: Is it fizzing? Is it dark? I don't know, you
Speaker 1: think twice maybe, because that's actually it's going to give
Speaker 1: the body less time and usual to process the toxins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with beer in and of itself,
Speaker 1: but pounding it several per hours probably not a good
Speaker 1: idea because it actually takes your body one hour process
Speaker 1: a drink like a beer, a glass of beer or
Speaker 1: a glass suppline. Well, you know what a houseman said
Speaker 1: about beer. What he said, beer has done more than
Speaker 1: Milton can to justify God's ways to man, I always
Speaker 1: like that one. He's of course referring to Milton, who
Speaker 1: paradise loss to justify the ways of god demands. So nice,
Speaker 1: that's just a little a set. I don't I'm actually
Speaker 1: not a beer drinker, but I like that quick you
Speaker 1: know that that that makes me think about when we
Speaker 1: can't remember which podcast it was, but we talked about
Speaker 1: how coffee houses really helped to usher in the age
Speaker 1: of enlightenment because before everyone has just drunk off their butts, right,
Speaker 1: because beer was sometimes more readily available than clean water.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you know, put a little caffeine and
Speaker 1: then and all of a sudden people perk up and
Speaker 1: the ideas start flowing. So yeah, and also it was
Speaker 1: the you know, it's an age like you don't like
Speaker 1: your current state. It's like, I don't really like where
Speaker 1: my mind's at. I want to change it. What should
Speaker 1: I do? Well, there's the beer option, and then there's nothing,
Speaker 1: so I better go with the beer option. Now there
Speaker 1: are a lot more options. There's there's the upper and
Speaker 1: the downer, there's the coffee, there's the drink. People began
Speaker 1: to go more and more with the upper, with the
Speaker 1: coffee especially. Yeah, and then, of course we won't talk
Speaker 1: about it right now, but a little bit we'll talk
Speaker 1: about why you actually shouldn't mix you're caffeine with your alcohol.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about something that is quite a menace.
Speaker 1: It is as hyde. It's it's quite a bogger, right,
Speaker 1: It's a it's creative when alcohol and the liver is
Speaker 1: broken down, and it's more toxic than alcohol itself, and
Speaker 1: usually the toxin is neutralized when it bonds to substances
Speaker 1: called glutathione and nasatelda hide de hydrogen ase. But when
Speaker 1: large amounts of alcohol enter the system, liver stores of
Speaker 1: glutathion quickly run out and causes astel to hide, to
Speaker 1: build up in the body and linger for for long
Speaker 1: periods of time. Okay, so that's why, um, this is
Speaker 1: really important because you just have a finite store of
Speaker 1: basically these other little agents that come in and they
Speaker 1: are the clamp crew and they whisk everything away. So
Speaker 1: the more alcohol you pour into that, the more you're
Speaker 1: going to deplete the clean up agents. And that's when
Speaker 1: you get into trouble because you've got the acetelda hide
Speaker 1: just sitting there and storing up. So it also turns
Speaker 1: out that women have less stores of glutoth ione and
Speaker 1: acetel to hide dehydrogen ese, which makes their hangover to
Speaker 1: worse because it takes longer for the body to break
Speaker 1: down the alcohol. In case anybody's wondering, I know, sometimes
Speaker 1: people think that it has to do with body weight,
Speaker 1: and you know, certainly that is a factor. But the
Speaker 1: reason why women are essentially lightweights is because they don't
Speaker 1: have as much as that cleanup crew hanging out in
Speaker 1: their liver. It's also worth noting that sistine alright, cisticine
Speaker 1: is actually hanging out with the glutoth ione and helps
Speaker 1: to clean up. Yea, eggs contain a large amount of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you the whole thing about have a big
Speaker 1: breakfast after you had a night of drinking, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some truth to that because I think you know, big
Speaker 1: plate of eggs is going to have a lot of
Speaker 1: sustaining in it, right, and that will help kind of
Speaker 1: whisk it all out of your system. Um, but let's
Speaker 1: talk about this this last element which is really important
Speaker 1: about what's happening inside your body. Glutamine rebound. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is basically the the idea that uh that you've been
Speaker 1: you've been taking into pressant all night in the form
Speaker 1: of the alcohol, and then once you get home, you've
Speaker 1: stopped drinking, you want to sleep, but your body is
Speaker 1: now rebounding from all that depression. That's right. I'll call
Speaker 1: it inhibiting gluta mine, which is one of the body's
Speaker 1: natural stimulants. So when the drinker stops drinking and the
Speaker 1: body tries to make up for the lost time by
Speaker 1: producing more glutamen, and the net net is that your
Speaker 1: brain is really busy trying to recalibrate your body and
Speaker 1: therefore not resting during sleep. Right It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the cat has been sleeping all day, all afternoon while
Speaker 1: you've been running around. Now you want to sleep, but
Speaker 1: now the cat is awake. In the brain is the
Speaker 1: cat and it wants to play with a mouse right now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean that's what leads to tremors, anxiety.
Speaker 1: This just general feeling of malai's restlessness and increase blood pressure,
Speaker 1: which is really important I think for people understand if
Speaker 1: they've got some risk factors there. And of course we
Speaker 1: need to talk about poopy tubes. I'm talking about diarrhea. Yes,
Speaker 1: what's the what's the rationale on this? Why should that
Speaker 1: have anything to do with like, because I mean it
Speaker 1: seems on one level, it's like this shouldn't really concern
Speaker 1: you intestines. This is this is just between my my,
Speaker 1: my brain, my liver, and my bladder. Like you you
Speaker 1: shouldn't even be a part of this discussion. Why are
Speaker 1: you butting in? Okay, because the stommic the intestines are like, hey,
Speaker 1: I've been poisoned, essentially because the alcohol is absorbed through
Speaker 1: the stomach lining and then those cells become irritated, right,
Speaker 1: and they just want to get everything out there, like
Speaker 1: something is wrong here. Let's just clear it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and dump it all out. Also,
Speaker 1: alcohol promote secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach um,
Speaker 1: eventually causing the nerves to send a message to the
Speaker 1: brain that the stomachs contents are hurting the body and
Speaker 1: must be expelled through vomit. Okay, okay, So that's why
Speaker 1: sometimes people are clutching out the porcelain. God. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's it's like when you if you have any kind
Speaker 1: of like food poisoning situation, it's like the bodies like
Speaker 1: something ain't working. Everybody the out the front, out the back,
Speaker 1: I don't care. Whichever is easy is find the nearest exit.
Speaker 1: You you were you were told to note it when
Speaker 1: you entered the plane. Now it's time to leave. That's
Speaker 1: why we're shutting this down. Yeah, alright, So those are
Speaker 1: some of the basics about what's happening, these awful things
Speaker 1: that are happening in your body. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the I will never do that again syndrome a
Speaker 1: k a. Rose colored beer goggles. Rose colored beer goggles. Yes,
Speaker 1: now this is this is easy for anyone to imagine.
Speaker 1: Who's who's certainly who's ever had a little too much
Speaker 1: to drink, or even if you've just seen a TV
Speaker 1: show or a movie where someone has had too much
Speaker 1: to drink, there comes that that that moment in the
Speaker 1: morning after where someone's head feels like it's splitting in
Speaker 1: half or their their bodies evacuating at both ends. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know they're in a horrible state and they're clearly thinking,
Speaker 1: or you're clearly thinking, I Am never doing that again,
Speaker 1: because no matter how good it I felt last night,
Speaker 1: at any given moment, it's not worth how I'm feeling now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. For at least an hour up to possibly
Speaker 1: like I don't know, days, weeks, months afterward, you may
Speaker 1: be in this sort of shame spiral of I will
Speaker 1: never do that again, and I was a complete drunken
Speaker 1: stein um and you know it's it just never will
Speaker 1: happen again. I will never behave in such a way,
Speaker 1: and then it happens again. And this is very common,
Speaker 1: right yeah, I mean this. You can expand this out
Speaker 1: to anything humans do well. I mean I always keep
Speaker 1: making the same mistakes we never learned, and we are
Speaker 1: pretty bad at weighing long term effects versus instant gratification.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, our ulysses packed with ourselves is usually no
Speaker 1: one void when it comes to alcohol. But just to
Speaker 1: throw some stats at you, more than seventy five of
Speaker 1: alcohol consumers have experienced to hang over at least once,
Speaker 1: have one at least every month. In percent of you
Speaker 1: crazy college students feel symptoms weekly, which is not a
Speaker 1: big surprise. So again, obviously people keep coming back to
Speaker 1: the trough when it comes to alcohol, and why do
Speaker 1: they do it? Positive memory bias. That's right. It turns
Speaker 1: out you are a very unreliable witness when it comes
Speaker 1: to you and drinking the previous nights bender might have
Speaker 1: seemed far more entertaining than it actually was, and you
Speaker 1: overrate the experience so that it now has a positive
Speaker 1: memory bias. Okay. Um. Researcher Diane Logan wrote a her
Speaker 1: findings in a paper for the Journal of Addictive Behavior,
Speaker 1: saying quote what goes on in some people's minds is, hey,
Speaker 1: I've learned my lesson, things will be better next time.
Speaker 1: Suddenly they think urinating on myself, it's not really that bad,
Speaker 1: and it's already happened a couple of times. Um, And
Speaker 1: this is what we call cognitive dissonance, right, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then again Logan says, it's kind of where the
Speaker 1: brain is at battle with itself. So if I'm a
Speaker 1: good upstanding person, those bad behaviors from the night before
Speaker 1: just don't quite fit together. Either I have to change
Speaker 1: my view of myself, which is really important with cognitive dissonance, right,
Speaker 1: or I have to change my view of the actual
Speaker 1: activity that occurred. So it's that changed battle we spoke
Speaker 1: of just ceases to exist because you can negate it
Speaker 1: by explaining away the events of your transgressions as saying,
Speaker 1: for instance, like, oh, well, that's just the cultural norm.
Speaker 1: This happens, right, peeing on yourself it happens. But I
Speaker 1: don't know that's actually I don't know how cultural norm
Speaker 1: that is. Well, I feel like it's more I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen, like you say, sooner or later, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be on yourself. There's no avoiding it. I kind
Speaker 1: of I'm gonna say a circumstance or another I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, perhaps this is a gender difference. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, So there you go. That's that's why
Speaker 1: we keep coming back to the alcohol trop or at
Speaker 1: least some of us do, even though we've had a
Speaker 1: horrible experience. Uh. You know, we might feel like we're
Speaker 1: dying the next day because we overrate the experience of
Speaker 1: one we actually had a buzz. Alright, So this is
Speaker 1: what I want to know. Can you you, Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: can you cure a hangover? Um? It depends what you
Speaker 1: mean by cure. Can I help it go away in time? Yes?
Speaker 1: Because it will go away in time? Um. But but
Speaker 1: the key thing there is the time there's there there's
Speaker 1: unfortunately for for those that are hungover. Uh, there's no
Speaker 1: real magic cure like uh. One of the big things
Speaker 1: is water both as a preventative and is a treatment
Speaker 1: for the for the hangover. Okay, so there's no no
Speaker 1: cure except for time. Time heals all wounds. Right, but
Speaker 1: you can be made more comfortable, yes, yeah? And what
Speaker 1: what water is key? Because as we discussed, dehydration is
Speaker 1: a huge part of this. So if you're drinking more
Speaker 1: water before and endearing and after you've had alcohol, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be better off in the long run. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that one's older brother
Speaker 1: or friend is you know, probably told you in the
Speaker 1: wee early days of your drinking, yeah, or your grandmother,
Speaker 1: you know, like, have a have a glass of water
Speaker 1: between drinks, or if you're feeling like the one I
Speaker 1: remember hearing when I was younger was um but though
Speaker 1: of a drinking age was if you've finished drinking for
Speaker 1: the evening and you feel kind of weird, you know,
Speaker 1: drink drink water, and then when you feel like you
Speaker 1: cannot drink anymore water, have another glass of water, because
Speaker 1: you're just gonna be better off in the long run
Speaker 1: for your organs, for your brain, everything. Yeah. Just remember
Speaker 1: your poor brain being robbed of water, so try to
Speaker 1: replenish that and you will probably won't have a hangover,
Speaker 1: but of course that depends on how much you drink.
Speaker 1: There is actually some really important preventative stuff you can
Speaker 1: do too, Yeah, and I was suppresed by this actually
Speaker 1: eating large fatty meals. Yeah, this is interesting because it's
Speaker 1: sometimes mentioned as a cure, but it's like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: feeling hungover, better, hit the fries, cook, get some tater tots.
Speaker 1: So this is not true in the morning after, right,
Speaker 1: not not true the morning after, but as a preventative
Speaker 1: before that's where it makes a difference. You gotta have
Speaker 1: that stuff already down there to soak it up. That's right.
Speaker 1: It actually can slow the absorption of alcohol if you
Speaker 1: have a big fatty meal beforehand. And of course hydrating
Speaker 1: beforehand is really important. In fact, for every drink, you
Speaker 1: should have one glass of water. Right, Actually, you just
Speaker 1: mentioned that and this was interesting too. So you know
Speaker 1: all these different hangover solution pills, the sort of magic
Speaker 1: pills you can take to supposedly help you with your hangover. Um,
Speaker 1: some of those do actually have some vitamins that are helpful,
Speaker 1: because you know, they're various vitamins, nutritious things that are
Speaker 1: that are lost during the night the unique to replenish.
Speaker 1: But for the most part you'll find that these pills
Speaker 1: are saying like, all right, take one of these every
Speaker 1: two hours with like three glasses of water or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the water that's helping. If that's a pill is
Speaker 1: largely incidental. It's not a magic pill at all. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, of course vitamins can help, right, especially
Speaker 1: if the next day you are you know, been robbed
Speaker 1: if your potassium. Yeah, eat banana, yeah, eat banana. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the next day, eat a banana, have some eggs.
Speaker 1: As you said, that's sister scene is actually going to
Speaker 1: clean things up pretty well for you. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: of course water water, water, what else we owe sports
Speaker 1: drinks because they actually contain the electro lights and sugars
Speaker 1: and salts to help you balance. And if you if
Speaker 1: you were and if you were stupid enough to get
Speaker 1: yourself hungover, then you deserve to have to drink one
Speaker 1: of those horrible sports drinks. Consider it part of your
Speaker 1: punishment for what you did. The range sugar water tastes bad, sure,
Speaker 1: but you earned it, so that's your prize hangover. And
Speaker 1: in fact, you should drink it in public, go outside,
Speaker 1: walk around with it, go through that a wine glass. Yeah.
Speaker 1: See how the sex do you feel? Then? Um? But
Speaker 1: this is another important thing to uh we mentioned it earlier. Caffeine.
Speaker 1: Stay away from it because even though it will give
Speaker 1: you a lift, you know, it's pretty momentary um and fleeting,
Speaker 1: and it will actually rob your body of more water,
Speaker 1: of course. And another thing to keep in mind is
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking back to a professor I had in college,
Speaker 1: and he's a great professor. I'm not going to name him,
Speaker 1: but but he was a great professor. But I remember
Speaker 1: one of his classes. One of my classmates was like,
Speaker 1: you should smell its coffee cup when you go, when
Speaker 1: you go, And I'm like, how am I gonna smell
Speaker 1: his coffee cups? And it's like, trust me, you don't
Speaker 1: have to try very hard. And and his his coffee
Speaker 1: cup like reeked of alcohol, so he's having some sort
Speaker 1: of morning combination of caffeine but also the hair of
Speaker 1: the dog that did in right, And that's another kind
Speaker 1: of myth. When it comes to fighting a hangover, you
Speaker 1: cannot drink it away, right. All you're doing is accumulating
Speaker 1: more toxins in your lover for it to dump out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it best. You're just putting off the inevitable. You're
Speaker 1: just kicking that drunken can down the street a little ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that, but maybe it'll get you through first period.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Right, Sometimes you just need to get
Speaker 1: through that first hour. Again, not advocating this because it
Speaker 1: is awful. Do you mentioned quote beer goggles earlier? Is
Speaker 1: that really a thing? It actually is? Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is really interesting. We have an article called there's a
Speaker 1: mathematical formula for the beer goggles effect question mark and
Speaker 1: neurons and the nucleus A Cummins fire when you look
Speaker 1: at a face that you deem attractive. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: important to know. Alcohol by itself actually causes neurons to
Speaker 1: fire in the nucleus it commons as well, so it
Speaker 1: is stimulated just a little bit more. Right. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that if you're drinking and you're assessing someone's
Speaker 1: attractiveness or whether or not you feel like you I
Speaker 1: want to talk to this person or so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, you may have some over activity in that
Speaker 1: area of your brain. And studies have shown the inebriated
Speaker 1: study participants rated photos of strangers twenty five percent more
Speaker 1: attractive than their sober counterparts did with the same photos.
Speaker 1: And then there's actually apparently a mathematical formula for this
Speaker 1: beer goggles effect, and it takes into account the lighting
Speaker 1: level and the quality of the person's eyesight. And you know,
Speaker 1: along with like four other factors. So there you go.
Speaker 1: Beer goggles does exist for apparently for for men and women.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of false claims out there
Speaker 1: about what can be done to cure a hangover, what
Speaker 1: can be done to to to to soften its effects,
Speaker 1: because because when you when you have a hangover, especially
Speaker 1: severe when you're you're probably willing to pay any amount
Speaker 1: of money for it to go away. And um, one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things that ran across this from several
Speaker 1: years back. And I don't think it's really kicked off anymore.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really gained anymore esteem. But um, it was
Speaker 1: invented by a business by the name of Dominique similar
Speaker 1: and it was called a wall alcohol without liquid. Um
Speaker 1: tell me more, which sounds a little alcohol without borders
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, alcohol without liquid. And this was the
Speaker 1: idea that you would you would take alcohol and you
Speaker 1: would you would turn it into an inhalable form, so
Speaker 1: you would go up to your to the bar, I guess,
Speaker 1: and they would hand you a like a blue velvet
Speaker 1: style gas and you would huff the alcohol. And and
Speaker 1: it was the marketing on this is that it's going
Speaker 1: to be like low carb because you're not you're not.
Speaker 1: It's not physical, so you can't possibly have any weight
Speaker 1: to it, and it's you're not gonna really get get
Speaker 1: much of a hand. Clowns show up, does a woman
Speaker 1: carrying a log show up? Yes? And participating bars um.
Speaker 1: But but the thing is, it turns out when scientists
Speaker 1: were asked about this, and when when journals actually like
Speaker 1: looked into the matter, most of this stuff it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: Like the carb issue is bunk and the hangover issues
Speaker 1: kind of tricky too, because we mentioned there's several reasons
Speaker 1: for hangover to happen, and a number of them are
Speaker 1: not going to really be affected by by whether you're
Speaker 1: you're drinking it or inhaling it into your body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like if that were actually an effective mode
Speaker 1: of making someone drunk, that would be piped into you know,
Speaker 1: most retail areas for instance. It may affect some of
Speaker 1: the congenerous in the alcohol. I Like we said that
Speaker 1: you know find this specifically like red wine and dark alcohols.
Speaker 1: But but that's not going to affect the dehydration, the
Speaker 1: diseruption of electro light branches, sleep patterns being messed with.
Speaker 1: Uh So Yeah, it turns out it's not really um
Speaker 1: the pie in the sky thing that the people thought
Speaker 1: it was. Like I said, if it were, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure the gap would be pumping it out right shopping.
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier in the podcast how it couldn't really
Speaker 1: find anything to to tell me yea or nay on
Speaker 1: the whole increased focus with hangover, um so, and which
Speaker 1: leads me to believe that I am full of it
Speaker 1: on that you know, or this just sort of I
Speaker 1: think for you, this is just a unique situation. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling it's it's me over compensating and being
Speaker 1: like hangover ruining my morning. No, I'm gonna get some
Speaker 1: work done anyway. Yeah, but I did find something um
Speaker 1: I mentioned on Psychology Today called the hangover hypothesis, and
Speaker 1: this basically breaks down that a night of moderate drinking
Speaker 1: okay moderate plus a low car breakfast can improve your
Speaker 1: mood and memory. Specifically, they mentioned some research from the
Speaker 1: University of Wales that showed that people who fast and
Speaker 1: choose to skip breakfast after drinking alcohol the night before
Speaker 1: are less energetic big surprise, uh, and have poor mood
Speaker 1: throughout the morning. And according to a study published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience, individuals who consume more than
Speaker 1: four point five grams of alcohol the previous night. Uh,
Speaker 1: it compounds the effects of both memory and happiness. So
Speaker 1: they're sort of putting these together and making the argument
Speaker 1: that moderate drinking, low car breakfasts improved memory and improved moods.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, Yeah, of course that's all up
Speaker 1: for interpretation. That's always the problem, right, Like once one
Speaker 1: man's moderate is is another woman's uh way too much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's also some people can't have have zero
Speaker 1: tolerance for alcohol on a biological level. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: known people before that they they if they were to, say,
Speaker 1: you know, more than a couple of SIPs, they would
Speaker 1: be really drunk. But we're then violently my mother for instance, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's starched, breaking out into some sort of odd dance. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about a quarter a couple of wine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: entertaining for us. And then other people are just dangerous
Speaker 1: and that they drink so much that you you're around
Speaker 1: them and you're it feels like you should be keeping
Speaker 1: up with them, but they're bottommost pit I don't know,
Speaker 1: your tolerance builds up over time. But and then there
Speaker 1: are others who pass out with a cheeseburger in their mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I'm telling you these these are ugly pictures
Speaker 1: of alcohol, and yet uh, we continue to to go
Speaker 1: to it, right, Yeah yeah, I mean it's built up
Speaker 1: in culture, you know. And and that's a speaking of culture,
Speaker 1: I should I should mention that, you know, we're we
Speaker 1: were looking around seeing if there's anything about the future
Speaker 1: of hangovers, and unfortunately most of what I found was
Speaker 1: just stuff about the next hangover movie, which which Gibson right.
Speaker 1: But but I did find uh. I was reminded rather
Speaker 1: of of Ian m Banks culture novels, in which the
Speaker 1: members of the culture are like a post human um society.
Speaker 1: There they're they're humans that have been highly that are
Speaker 1: highly evolved, and then highly their their their physiology is
Speaker 1: highly tinkered with. It's a post singularity situation where robots
Speaker 1: do most of the works and human beings typically just
Speaker 1: do whatever they want, they engage in whatever arts. This
Speaker 1: is the benevolent version of the right benevent version of singularity.
Speaker 1: The robots do most of the work, the humans come
Speaker 1: along for the ride for occasional humanitarians, but mostly just
Speaker 1: do what they want to do, and and so they'll
Speaker 1: they'll typically have have drug glands in their bodies for
Speaker 1: hormonal levels, chemical secretions of various uppers and downers, and
Speaker 1: they also have the ability, and one of the characters
Speaker 1: does this in the player of games. They can actually
Speaker 1: bypass their system if they're drinking something they don't want
Speaker 1: to feel the effects of it, or presumably if they're
Speaker 1: eating for purely hedonistic reasons and they don't want to
Speaker 1: actually digest it, then they can just shoot it straight
Speaker 1: straight through, straight through, but their own little vomitorium right right,
Speaker 1: which doesn't didn't actually exist, right, but yes, we used
Speaker 1: to think of Roman times for a vomitorium, right, This
Speaker 1: would be the mythical idea of a vomitorium um brought
Speaker 1: to fruition through um through post humanism bodies. Well, and
Speaker 1: as we discussed in nanimal healthcare, surely there will be
Speaker 1: some sort of delivery system of at least nano aspirin
Speaker 1: to help alleviate some of the symptoms of our debauchery. Yes,
Speaker 1: in time, I can imagine like uh, nanotechnology creating if
Speaker 1: not a true hangover cure, then something akin to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, you heard it here first, or maybe don't.
Speaker 1: In any case, I hope that that gives everybody a
Speaker 1: good sense of what's happening in your body during a hangover.
Speaker 1: And I hope that I'm not too loud. If you
Speaker 1: are currently hungover and you are listening to me, I apologize. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: let's dip into the listener mail. Alright, man, that bot
Speaker 1: is hungover? What were you doing? Where were you robots go?
Speaker 1: I know, come on, robot mail person, and I know
Speaker 1: it's Monday, but come on, so let's see what do
Speaker 1: we have here. Here's one from Extra Extra writes in
Speaker 1: from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and says I was just listening
Speaker 1: to your miss Aphonia episode and I thought I would
Speaker 1: provide some insight from a sufferer. The sound I react
Speaker 1: to is munching or something sticky. The sound has to
Speaker 1: be below a certain volume, barely audible for me at least,
Speaker 1: and I respond with a rage so deep I have
Speaker 1: sometimes thought, only for a moment, about killing my father.
Speaker 1: My specific case is very easy to deal with. Avoiding
Speaker 1: my dad at breakfast seems to do quite well. I
Speaker 1: feel bad for those who react to a more common noise,
Speaker 1: especially those with a with a fight instinct. Uh, it
Speaker 1: really is quite a horrible affliction. Wow. Yeah, Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can actually can sort of under I'm not uh
Speaker 1: for me, I don't have ms aphonia, so obviously I
Speaker 1: don't respond so um passionately about that. But I can't
Speaker 1: understand how certain things that are right underneath the radar
Speaker 1: that you just kind of hear them are so distracting
Speaker 1: that your brain kind of goes, what is that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: however I don't. I guess I'm just glad that as
Speaker 1: avoiding his or her father. Yes, don't don't actually murder
Speaker 1: anybody because it sounds as h Yeah, and check out
Speaker 1: the mssophone uh podcast if you haven't heard it, because
Speaker 1: we do discuss various ways of dealing with it. Some
Speaker 1: of the best are merely being aware of it and
Speaker 1: just and you know, taking a step back and be like, whoa,
Speaker 1: I'm totally losing it over a sound. I should not
Speaker 1: get this mad and or kill my father, um over
Speaker 1: the sound release chewing. It's true. So hey, if you
Speaker 1: have something you want to share with us, you can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and you can also find us on Twitter. We're blow
Speaker 1: the Mind on Twitter, um, since we were limited by characters,
Speaker 1: but Blow the Mind stuff to Blow the Mind, you
Speaker 1: can find us on either with either of those handles
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, interact with the share stuff with us,
Speaker 1: let us know what you think about hangovers. You do
Speaker 1: not have to share your most outlinedish hangover story, but
Speaker 1: if you have a science thing upon it, or if
Speaker 1: you have a particular cure, or even if it's like
Speaker 1: a folk remedy that you've tried out, I would be
Speaker 1: interested to hear how it failed. And if you do
Speaker 1: want to share it with us but in a more
Speaker 1: private space, yeah, or you know, want to withhold you
Speaker 1: and right, feel free to send us an email at
Speaker 1: Blow the Mind at has to works dot com. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
Speaker 1: the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore
Speaker 1: the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.